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For many engineering and science students, entrepreneurship can feel like something separate from technical work. But turning breakthrough technologies into real-world impact takes more than strong research—it also requires core business values, amazing people, and the mindset to build something from scratch.

Sreekrishna "SK" Praveen, a second-year Quantum Technology student at Aalto University, chose Aalto because it offers one of the only bachelor's programs in Quantum Technology in the world. Passionate about both the potential of quantum technologies and the fascinating physics behind them, SK joined the Founder Minor to better understand how successful technology startups are built. What he found was something he hadn't expected: not just business knowledge, but the mindset and practical skills required to actually build a company.

We spoke with SK about why he joined the Founder Minor, how it changed the way he thinks about entrepreneurship, and why he believes every engineering student should embrace the founder mindset.

Can you tell us a little about yourself, what you're studying at Aalto, and what motivated you to join the Founder Minor alongside your Quantum Technology degree?

Clearly, quantum technology seems to be something everyone’s been talking about here recently and of many reasons, it is because of the possibilities the underlying technology holds. But to get these machines to work and have any positive impact in society demands strong research fundamentals, core business values and most importantly, amazing people. 

Given that through my study program I am exposed to the wide range of research opportunities Aalto boasts, I started looking around different organizations within Aalto which could expose me to the core business principles successful technology startups are built on. 

The search, to my surprise, came to an end at the most unexpected of places. 

So one late night, I was doomscrolling on SISU to look for interesting courses I could do as a side-quest (a term popularized by Gen Z) and as usual being the point of these doomscrolls, I was merely browsing courses without any intention of seriously doing them. And that’s when I came across the Founder Minor. 

Having already done a minor in the School of Business, I was somewhat aware of the theoretical concepts used in the operations of companies but what I saw in the Founder Minor was something not many universities were teaching, the mindset and the practicalities required to actually build a business yourself – the core business values. This was what I was looking for and naturally my search came to an end with the Founder Minor which I started by taking the course on Go To Market for Founders

As someone with a strong technical background, how has the Founder Minor changed the way you think about innovation and entrepreneurship?

Building a business isn’t just about managing the company’s financial assets even though it is a crucial part of it. When you are building a company from scratch, it turns out what matters more are your values and the people who you are building with. Some values vary with founders and the type of companies they set out to build but there are some fundamental values all successful businesses are built on – trust, determination and courage. And as a good founder, you need to embody these values. 

Trust: You can’t build a great company if your team doesn’t trust in you or themselves. A successful collaboration is where the team truly believes you are the person to get the job done and supports you; and where they take up ownership for their tasks and trust themselves to follow through on their commitments. Startups are temples of collaboration.

Determination: As a founder, you will go through tough times. In the book ‘The Hard Thing about Hard Things,’ which we had to read as part of the course Founder Insights, the author Ben Horowitz goes through a crisis when his company was on the verge of bankruptcy demanding his full attention and quick action. During the same period, his wife went through a health emergency which prompted Ben to make quick decisions to manage both his large company’s expectations and to support his wife through her recovery. The story that ensues is one of pure grit where simply because of the faith that things will get better, Ben manages to get his company out of crisis and also be with his wife. 

Courage: Being unafraid to go to enormous extent to get things done is something every Founder has to internalise. Be it going up to an investor meeting to pitch and being told that the idea is terrible or be it asking for favours from people who you once idolized. As a founder, you should have the courage to take up agency and to dream bigger than reality. 

After the Founder Minor, this is how my view of entrepreneurship changed from not knowing much about entrepreneurship to understanding the above-mentioned fundamentals every founder must start with to solve the biggest challenges the world faces. 

Was there a course, project, or experience within the Founder Minor that had the biggest impact on your thinking? Why?

Whilst attending a bunch of Founder Talks and doing courses from the Founder Minor, I came across the final piece of the great trilogy making up Aalto Founder School: Aalto Founder Sprint. This is a flagship 15-week long entrepreneurship program where participants learn the exact steps Founders take when building a startup. 

Throughout the 15 weeks, the program exposes its participants to the most successful founders and investors in Finland and the EU giving direct 1-1 access to all of them. The best part about being in the sprint is that you do this while building a startup of your own. Going to investor meetings with an unfinished pitch deck, getting stage fright and blanking out in front of 150+ people and staying up all night to get the deliverables done was all part of the process. The point was that you fail and you learn; and you learn it with a cohort of people who are as committed and curious as you are. 

I applied wanting to know what it takes to ‘found’ a startup that is led by the mission of making people’s lives better and in my case, I applied knowing that I wanted to achieve this mission using the power of some of the smallest things known to humans: atoms

You've represented Aalto at the Global Student Startup Competition. How did the Founder Minor help prepare you for that experience?

Whilst doing the Founder Sprint, our team got selected to represent Aalto at the Global Student Startup Competition in Seoul, South Korea where we were set to compete against schools like Harvard, Stanford and UC Berkeley. The stakes were high and our team was very motivated to showcase the spirit of entrepreneurship that was being cultivated in Finland and the EU (Aalto was the only university from the EU). 

We had to build a startup in the theme of ‘Next Generation of Culture and Media’ and this opportunity for me felt like an amazing culmination after just 5 months of being in the entrepreneurship space. Whilst building the business model for our startup ‘Touchgrass,’ where I naturally ended up going to was the slides Antti made for the course Go To Market for Founders. The principles and reasoning behind choosing the right market to enter for your startup made complete sense now as I had to apply it directly. And the 20+ pitches we had to do as part of the Founder Sprint paid off when we had to pitch in front of judges who were seasoned investors in Silicon Valley. 

As part of the competition, we also got to attend the Asian Leadership Conference where global leaders assembled to talk about the next generation of leaders and navigating the turmoil of the present. During the conference, I got to chat extensively with ex-Prime Ministers of countries, bureaucrats who worked directly with the president of the USA everyday and tech leaders from around the world. And obviously in order to have these conversations, we had to muster the courage and go up to them and initiate the conversation; this courage is something I got from being actively involved with the Founder School in such a short period of time.